


About Face

by ArtemisRae



Series: 31 Days Drabbles [52]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Community: 31_days, Gen, Pendulum Arc, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-25
Updated: 2009-08-25
Packaged: 2017-10-07 23:42:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisRae/pseuds/ArtemisRae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Byakuya realizes it's time to grow up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	About Face

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Livejournal community 31_days, with the theme: memories are films about ghosts.

* * *

It was not until his grandfather's funeral that Byakuya truly understood that Yoruichi was gone from Soul Society.

_Truly_ gone – some little unacknowledged part of his heart had long suspected that she and Urahara and Tessai were simply hiding somewhere, cloaking their riatsu and giggling at everyone who had the nerve to get on with their lives.

He spent the entire process staring down at the ground, just waiting for that innocuous black cat to come slinking up under the seats and twine its way around his ankles. He knew exactly what he would do, too: he was going to sniff and train his eyes ahead, focusing on the pomp and ceremony that his grandfather was so fond of and resolutely ignore the demon trying to distract him, even as he watched her out of the corner of his eye and refused to kick her away.

Then the ceremony was over and he realized that she hadn't come. She wouldn't even return to even pay respects to his grandfather – his _grandfather_, who had helped train her and helped her make the transition to captain – and for the first time in all the years since he'd last seen Shihouin Yoruichi he got angry.

She'd one-upped him _again_.

They'd spent years in competition against one another, and the thought that he wasn't going to get a chance to truly beat her made something inside of him well up, something deep and frustrating that choked all the protests from the insulted child howling to chase after her.

He was not a child anymore: there would be no more chases. The next morning when he took up his blade, he did not imagine her on the other end of it taunting him once.

* * *


End file.
